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Over-indebtedness
A service for SMEs under financial strain: analysis of the real situation, choice of the most suitable procedure and a sustainable path to financial recovery.
The starting point
When financial pressure mounts, time becomes a decisive factor. Acting early means having more tools to deal with over-indebtedness, protect business continuity and build a path to financial recovery. Everything starts with a clear analysis of the company’s situation, to identify the most suitable solutions and take decisions grounded in hard data. The procedures now provided for by the Italian Business Crisis Code derive from the landmark Law 3/2012, which introduced the tools for settling over-indebtedness crises.
“Debt can be restructured. But without correcting the causes that produced it, the problem is bound to return.”
The crisis arrives long before the courts
The law
Over-indebtedness in an SME is the situation in which a business can no longer pay its debts regularly with the resources available. The Italian Business Crisis and Insolvency Code, which replaced Law 3/2012, provides specific procedures for crisis settlement and debt restructuring.
The symptom
Over-indebtedness rarely starts with debt. More often it is the consequence of insufficient margins, unplanned investments, costs out of control, excessive reliance on credit, or financial management that is no longer sustainable.
That is why reducing the debt exposure is not enough: to stop the crisis from recurring, you need to understand whether the business can become economically sustainable again and what changes are needed.
Time
In a business crisis, the earlier you act with a debt restructuring plan, the more alternatives are available and the greater the chances of rebalancing the financial position.
Putting decisions off progressively narrows the room for action and leaves it to creditors, deadlines or enforcement proceedings to shape the company’s future. Asking for support in time does not mean admitting failure: it means regaining control before the crisis becomes harder to manage.
The path
“I define a concrete plan to face the crisis and protect business continuity.”
Every path starts from a true picture of the business: I analyse the economic and financial situation, reconstruct the debt exposure and the cash flows, verify the sustainability of the activity and assess which over-indebtedness settlement procedure is genuinely sustainable.
I coordinate the discussion with accountants, lawyers, advisers and creditors, building a realistic, documented path. I promise no easy solutions and take no shortcuts: the aim is to understand whether the conditions for business continuity exist, or whether an orderly restructuring path needs to be built.
A case, in technical terms
Before choosing a tool, the picture has to be reconstructed: how much debt there really is, what assets and what income support it, and what repayment capacity is realistic over time.
The reconstruction
Debt verified position by position — tax authority, social security bodies, banks, suppliers — and not simply added up from the statements. It is the precondition for any subsequent assessment.
Sustainability
A sustainable capacity is calculated on actual income and assets, not on the amount one would like to pay. The proposal has to be built so that it holds for the whole duration of the plan.
Over-indebtedness crisis settlement procedures are subject to the assessment of the competent bodies: no outcome is guaranteed or promised. The figures shown are illustrative and serve to show the method of analysis, not a result achieved.
The point of view
“I look at the numbers before the procedures, to build a concrete strategy for recovery and resilience.”
The procedures available to SMEs — the debt restructuring plan, controlled liquidation, the over-indebtedness crisis settlement agreement (introduced by Law 3/2012, later merged into the Italian Business Crisis Code, Legislative Decree 14/2019) — have different requirements and consequences. Choosing the most suitable path takes more than a legal assessment: it takes, first of all, an economic and financial analysis of the business.
Only by understanding the causes of the crisis can a genuinely sustainable solution be found. My role is to build that diagnosis, put the numbers in order and accompany the business owner with confidentiality and a concrete focus on results.
01 — Method
The four-phase path that supports expansion, reorganisation and business crisis, to make your company competitive, organised and ready for sustainable growth — or for building the value that a future exit requires.
Discover the Method02 — Services
The offer for business owners and SMEs: from outsourced financial leadership to management control, from business crisis to budgeting and business planning.
See all services06 — Questions
The questions business owners ask most often about access to credit, sustainable growth, margin control, exit strategy, generational handover and much more.
Read the answersAbout
I started in tax and corporate advisory in an accountancy practice, then chose to go directly into companies with management responsibilities: staff to coordinate, suppliers and banks to negotiate with, budgets to deal with. From inside many organisations I have lived the same dynamics every business owner faces, and it is from this wider perspective that my method of strategic outsourced financial leadership was born.
Today I bring this dual technical and managerial expertise inside SMEs as an outsourced finance director, a continuous point of reference for management control, financial planning, strategic decisions, crisis management and building the company’s value. This experience across different fields allows me to step in both on growth paths and in situations of financial rebalancing and business restructuring.
Let’s talk
If your company is going through a period of financial difficulty, the earlier you act the more alternatives are available. Write to me to arrange a first, confidential and exploratory conversation, to assess together the possible crisis settlement solutions.